


to have and to hold

by sophrosyns



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Marriage, Wedding Fluff, alternate universe where crona is just fine thank you very much, next chapter: the big day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 07:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17076080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophrosyns/pseuds/sophrosyns
Summary: “Maka?”“Yes.”“I can’t wait to marry you.”





	to have and to hold

Pigtails and scraped knees. Stubborn tears clinging to her lashes. This Maka is five years old and Soul only knows her in photographs. Spirit’s stories aren’t helpful, too fractured by drunken trysts to be accurate. Soul has written exactly one letter to Maka’s mother - opened and returned without a reply. He was really hoping she would at least show up for the wedding. Instead he had Spirit, cheerfully shoving photo after photo in his face for inspection.

“This one! How about this one? Isn’t my Maka precious?!”

Soul resists the urge to comment something spiteful about how she hasn’t been ‘his Maka’ in quite some time. She hadn’t even wanted him to be involved in this. But he’d pleaded, begged, and grovelled until she conceded. Which meant Soul was stuck with him in this cafe, nursing dregs of cold coffee and the beginnings of a killer headache. Spirit’s enthusiasm droning on in the background, Soul wonders if all this is really worth it. Not the marriage - that’s everything he could possibly ask for. He’s thinking of the actual ceremony. Maka hadn’t wanted one, or had at least insisted that was so. But a cool guy would never let their special day pass without letting the whole world knew how much he loved her.

“Soul! Are you even paying attention, you little bastard?” Spirit whines. Soul, most certainly not paying attention, nods.

“Yeah, yeah. Great pic.”

Spirit frowns, and pushes a photograph forward. Soul recognizes a shock of white hair and the practiced grin of a deeply self-conscious boy. Maka stands beside him, looking as outwardly uncomfortable as he’d been feeling that day. Actually, she looks equal parts pissed and exhausted. Makes sense, considering… “The day we moved in together.” Not too long after meeting. Still strangers, but with a terrifyingly intimate bond. After that, marriage seemed like such a small thing. When you were connected to someone by the soul, you may as well make that legally binding.

No, that’s just another lie he tells himself. Asking Maka to marry him had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Harder still than throwing himself in front of a blade for her. He tries not to blame Spirit too much for that. But they both know that his infidelity is directly responsible for her mistrust in men, and Soul is still picking up those pieces. He can sense it in the way she stands tensely in the doorway as he slips into his shoes. Shoulders stiff, gaze guarded.

“Just running to the store,” he’ll say.

“Okay,” she responds.

“You burnt the last of our eggs this morning.”

“I know.”

It was easy to promise her forever. A wedding was harder.

Spirit eyes him and pulls the photo back. “She was a miserable kid,” he sighs, shoulders slumping in acknowledgement of his failure as a father. “She only started to lighten up after she met you.”

Soul just shrugs, takes a sip of his coffee and grimaces at the taste. He doesn’t want to talk about _why_ she may have been so sad as a child. Spirit gives him another photo. This one, Soul hasn’t seen before, but the moment rushes back to him like a tidal wave. Maka has her head thrown back in laughter, her legs slung over his lap. Her bare feet are propped up on the armrest of their old couch. His arm is around her waist and he’s looking at her as if she’s the most important person in the world.

As if she _is_ the whole world.

Damn it, cool guys shouldn’t cry in crowded cafes.

“Your friend gave me this one,” Spirit explains, his voice unusually soft. “Nice girl. Dark hair. Big-”

Soul cuts him off with a disgusted glare, irritated to have been taken out of his moment. He grumbles, touching the edge of the photograph as if it may disintegrate. “I’m keeping it.”

Spirit smiles as he begins to pack up the other pictures, separating the ones they’ve chosen for the wedding album. “Go right ahead, kid.”

\---

As the big day approaches, Maka becomes increasingly more irritable.

She carries that dreadful tension in her shoulders, and occasionally it seeps into her words like bitter poison.

Two days before they’re meant to be married, they fight. Soul has forgotten to give Crona the rings, and Maka takes this in precisely the wrong way.

“If you didn’t want them involved, you should have said so,” she says, slowly and without pretense.

He stiffens, sliding the ring box across the table. Hand to hand, back and forth. “I’ve got nothing against ‘em.”

This comment earns him a patented eyeroll. “You’re a shitty liar.”

This is Soul’s sore spot. He’s never lied to her, and never will.

“They’ve gotta be over you by now. Even if you never actually…” He catches himself, but not in time.

This is Maka’s sore spot. Even the slightest hint of accusation is enough, no matter how veiled or vague. Her stare turns icy. Her lips pull into a thin, tight line. “You wanna finish that sentence?”

“Drop it, Maka. Didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No. Do you honestly think there’s anything there for you to be so rude about?”

The ring box stops, caught in Soul’s left hand. If she wants the truth so badly, who is he to deny her? “I think there might have been once.”

Maka looks like she might hit him, fists clenched tight. It hurts to see those hands - which have held him so many times - poised in anger. Then there’s something else in her stance that makes him believe he’s not totally wrong. The uncertainty is suffocating him.

“Maka?”

“Yes.”

“Was there something?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

“I just don’t.”

She turns on her heel, yanking her coat off the rack and jamming her boots onto her feet. None of this is particularly reassuring.

“Where are you going?” he asks, lips stretching over sharp teeth in an ugly, uncomfortable frown.

“For a walk.” He assumes that this time, he’s not invited, and lets her go without protest.

Late that night, long after the last streetlight goes out in Death City, she comes back and crawls into bed like nothing happened. Lying beside her, Soul weighs his options. He can play along with the act, give Crona the rings, and pretend like they never argued. Or he can confront the reality of the situation. In the end, he figures he owes it to her now to be braver than he was before.

“Maka?”

“Yes.”

“I know you love me.”

“Good.”

He rolls onto his side. She has her back to him. “And I know you’re nothing like your dad.”

“ _Good_.”

He shifts closer and wraps an arm around her waist. She doesn’t tense or pull away, so he figures this is going as well as can be expected. “One more question?” She nods, her hand sliding overtop of his. Her ring still holds the chill of the night air. “Was it just a crush?”

Death City is never silent, but Soul feels a soundless pressure encompass them in the long seconds before her response. “I wouldn’t even call it that,” she whispers, “They needed someone… I wanted to be that person for them.” She rolls over to face him, her fingers tracing the ragged edge of his scar. “I think they may have felt something for me. but I doubt they understood it at all. I don’t think Crona is even interested in…” Her palm presses flat against his chest. “They just want someone to care. And I do care, but not in the same way I care about you. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t assume how they feel-”

She’s cut off as Soul leans in and presses a kiss to her rambling lips. He strokes a hand through her hair and swallows her doubt whole. “You talk too much sometimes,” he says, lips quirking into an off-kilter smile. She swats at his chest weakly, understanding that he’s really saying _I trust you._

“Maka?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t wait to marry you.”

 


End file.
